“When cash flow is tight, it’s time to barter” says Bill Rosenberg, successful owner of BarterBing.com, a ten year old Rhode Island based online B2B barter exchange.

The Time to Barter Has Never Been Better

Predating currency and monetary systems, barter is now rapidly growing during what is shaping up to be the nation’s biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Extremely tight credit is forcing many businesses to seek alternatives to credit and cash to stay afloat. According to the Small Business Administration, loans approved for small businesses have declined nearly 30 percent over the last year. When you tap into barter, estimated to generate more than $3 billion annually through U.S. exchanges alone, you gain the following 3 key advantages:

Locate new customers and sell excess inventory

Barter clients often return as cash-paying customers

Conserve hard-to-come-by cash for other crucial expenditures

BarterBing.com is Actually a Bank That Helps Grow Your Business

BarterBing, established in 1999 as an online exchange, taps into a network of more than 50,000 businesses and individuals worldwide. Excess inventory and unsold billable hours are traded at fair market price. BarterBing is a bank that will extend a line of credit to businesses and then help them find new customers to pay off the credit advance.

As part of this growing barter network, BarterBing.com uses “barter dollars.” When a trade is made, the recipient earns dollars to be used as currency on the site. With barter dollars, you can buy anything, from acupuncture or window-tinting to graphic design or accounting services. “It’s like eBay, only we don’t charge you to list items in our system,” says Rosenberg. The only charge is a 10 percent transaction fee paid by the buyer when a purchase is made.

Visit www.barterbing.com today, click on barter store or service list to see what is currently being offered for sale…then click the “Sign-up Now!” button for your free membership.

http://lifestyletom.com/path/rao10925685904ros/roin59012199485

At the very end of the Seminal/FireDogLake discussion of my last post, “How Are You Going To Pay For It”, two commenters, ironymeter and konst, offered some comments about the idea in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that fiat currency is, to a great extent, accepted, because the Government mandates its status as sole legal tender which can be used for paying taxes imposed by the Government. Let’s begin with a reply to ironymeter; who says:

At the heart of MMT is the idea that people will value the currency and accept it as the medium of exchange. If people no longer need it to pay taxes, the willingness to do this will decline.

The heart of MMT is a conjecture that people won’t value currency if they don’t need it to pay Federal taxes?

At the heart of every economic theory based on government issued currency (backed or fiat) is the idea that people will accept it as a medium of exchange, otherwise it’s worthless. Could you explain the reasoning behind your “reasonable conjecture” that in the absence of Federal taxes people will be less willing to accept government issued currency as a medium of exchange? Roughly 80% of what we use money for is not Federal Taxes: it hardly seems reasonable to conjecture that in the absence of federal taxes people will stop using money…

I think what we’re talking about here is the legitimacy of money, and not just any money, but Federal Government money that has no backing from a commodity like silver or gold. People might accept that kind of money as a means of exchange in the abstract, because they need some medium of exchange, but why would they accept it in preference to a commodity or something commodity-backed, that someone else began to circulate, if they were not required to accept it? And if they were “required” to accept it in law, why would they more or less willingly do so, if they did not “need” that money for some requirement they could not avoid, imposed by the Government, such as paying taxes with that money?

At the recent Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference, Stephanie Kelton provided a very good narrative comparing the MMT point of view on the currency with the conventional textbook view found in economics. Here’s what she had to say on the subject.

When you open up an economics textbook, and you turn to the page that begins to talk about money, inevitably you find a story that begins with something about barter; and ‘once upon a time’ man trucked his wares to the local trading venue because he’s pre-programmed to truck barter in exchange, as Adam Smith told us, and there was no currency around. So you had to lug your clay pots and your shoes and your fish and whatever else you may have specialized in the production of, down to some local trading venue, where the only way the exchange could take place is if you happen to come upon the person who not only had what you wanted, but wanted what you had.

Economists refer to that as the double coincidence of wants. And so, barter is this clumsy system for conducting exchange and, so the story goes, man suddenly decided – hey there must be a better way to organize – we should really think about finding some Thing that would be universally accepted. And, lo and behold, they hit on money, primitive forms of money first. The textbooks tell stories of things like pebbles and shells and feathers and beads and all of that, and later discovering money things like precious metals, which had nice properties that fish and other commodity monies didn’t have, in that they would serve as a good store of value, they were easily divisible, they were portable – you put your coins in your pocket and go conduct your exchange.

But, the story is always told that this somehow happened spontaneously. The private sector figures out that there’s a more efficient way to conduct exchange. They choose to use money. They decide what money is. And this all happens without imposition from any authority, no state, nothing like that. So the money is stateless. And, then of course, over time, money evolves (I’m still in the textbook story) from things like primitive money to gold and then to paper with gold backing. People take paper in exchange for real goods and services and the argument is – well, but at the end of the day, it’s as good as gold. So they continue to accept the paper.

Then the story gets more difficult to explain, for this group. Sometimes we call them the Metalists because, when you have a pure fiat money system, why do people accept currency, that is intrinsically worthless, backed by nothing of value, and yet people will beg, borrow, steal, toil away the day, in order to get these otherwise worthless pieces of paper?

And so, what we like, what we prefer, is the story that’s been dubbed, or the approach that’s been dubbed Modern Money Theory, which traces the nature and origin of money to the early authorities. Randy has written a lot about this in his, ‘Understanding Modern Money’ book, from the early temples and later to the nation states and we could go on and on about this, but that’s not what I want to do. But, it does trace the origin and nature of money to some power authority; that is, the money does not emerge spontaneously by the will of the people, but it is imposed on them.

How is it imposed on them? It is dictated by the authority. It is chosen. The authority establishes that you all must pay something to me. I define the unit of account. In the United States, the unit of account is the dollar. So I say in what unit you must pay obligations to me and then I tell you what you have to do to eliminate those debts. And so, I impose a tax liability on you. I make you indebted to me. Now you need to do something to eliminate your obligation to me. And I tell you how you can do that. In the United States, you can earn dollars. You pay your tax obligation to the state in U.S. dollars. That gives value to the government’s otherwise worthless pieces of paper, and allows them to move real resources from the private to the public domain.

So we have a very clear way to answer the question ‘Why is fiat money accepted?’, whereas our textbook counterparts have some difficulty with that. If you push them too hard, they say, ‘Well, Pavlina accepts dollars from me when I go into her shop because she knows that she can pay Warren her rent with those dollars’. And then you say, ’Well, why does Warren take them?’ ‘Well, Warren knows that he can pay Marshall when he rents a car from him’. ‘Well, why does Marshall take them?’ ‘Well, Marshall knows that Randy will take them.’ And you get into this infinite regress problem. They really have no answer, is the problem in that theory.

So the Modern Money approach accepts that the currency derives its value from the state’s willingness to accept it in payment to the state, to eliminate obligations to the state. Now there are lots of things that obviously circulate as money things. The government’s money is not the only thing out there. And there is some ordering, or hierarchy of money things. Some are more generally accepted than others.

And so here I have a quote from James Tobin just to give this some credibility because we pull out the Nobel Prize winner when we want to convince you that these ideas are not crazy and fringe, and James Tobin said in a book in 1998, “In advanced societies the central government is in a strong position to make certain assets generally acceptable media by its willingness to accept a designated asset in settlement of taxes and other obligations. The government makes that asset acceptable to any who have such obligations and in turn to them and to others and so on.”

So Pavlina takes it because she has obligations to the state. If she herself doesn’t, she knows she can find someone who does. That’s why this thing is special and that’s why the government’s IOU is special and those of us that have done some work in this area, in talking about a hierarchy of money would argue that the reason that the state’s IOU, the state’s money sits at the top of the hierarchy is because it is the most generally accepted and it gains its acceptability by virtue of the state’s proclamation that we all need it in order to eliminate our tax liability.

So, Modern Money Theory stresses the relationship between the government’s ability to make and enforce tax laws on the one hand, and its power to create or destroy money by fiat on the other. I would define as a sovereign government, a government that retains these powers, that they are sovereign in their own currencies. Among others, examples of governments with sovereign currency, the United States, Canada, UK, Japan and Australia, all sovereign in this regard, by this definition.

I think the MMT view on the origin of money, as stated by Stephanie Kelton, above, and Randy Wray, in his book Understanding Modern Money, is much more realistic than the view that money is stateless. And I also think that the day-to-day role of the possibility of the State’s using coercion to force payment of taxes, is vital for establishing that the State’s money, which is needed to pay imposed taxes, is valuable at least for that purpose, and that since it is, and since everyone must have access to it anyway, they may as well also use it a general medium of exchange for all transactions public and private. So, to go further, it also seems very reasonable to me to expect that if people no longer needed Federal currency to pay Federal taxes, then the bonds between Federal currency and transactions would be loosened, and that people would find ways to do without Federal money altogether. Barter after all is not illegal, and would rise in frequency if people did not have a legal requirement to gather money to pay taxes. Also, various types of private, some backed by commodities would, no doubt, also begin to emerge.

In addition to ironymeter’s comment, konst also had some on the role of state authority/coercion in making fiat money valuable. In reply to a comment by Warren Mosler on making litter into currency, konst said:

From your example it seems MMT/Neo-Chartalists idea of what our world should be is the government as a sociopath which threatens you with a gun saying “your money or your life” like the kleptocracy we have now.

That is so wrong on many levels. The Soviet Union tried that in the 20th century. Where are they now?

P.S. Mr. Mossler nothing personal. I have seen MMT theorists using that argument before. I just wanted to make a point. It’s a road to totalitarianism.

This, of course, is just a lot of name-calling. The Government, according to the Constitution, has the authority to create and destroy money. There is nothing kleptocratic, or immoral, or sociopathic about using this authority. It’s an authority that the Government of the United States has used since the Continental Congresses, even prior to the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, and it is an authority used by every Administration since that time, and in a very effective way under our greatest Presidents, Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. It is ridiculous to associate creating and destroying currency specifically with the Soviet Union and totalitarianism. It is nothing more than a power associated with national sovereignty, and with the presence of a Government that has the authority to be effective in promoting the general welfare if it wants to be. And it has no more connection with totalitarianism than any other necessary power of a national Government has.

In a later comment, konst went on to say:

We know from historical examples that Governments have imposed fiat currencies before on populations that have had no desire for them, and that the currencies became the medium of exchange because people needed it to pay taxes.

Where in the history of the world has a government imposed a fiat currency in a society where a real money-medium-of-exchange has not already existed?

If there really was such a case in history it’s likely the people on which it was imposed were slaves to begin with.

There’s plenty of evidence that it’s the Governments imposing the money in ancient history. Randy Wray reviews a lot of it here, and references historical sources. There’s also Chapter 3 from his book Understanding Modern Money. Both references provide plenty of evidence to prove that Governments decide on the currency, whether or not the people on which “it is imposed” are slaves or not.

Summing up, the idea that “legitimate physical coercion,” the basis of Governmental authority is, equally, the foundation of the value of money, is an idea that is profoundly opposed to neo-liberal economics and also to the Austrian School. In these approaches the market is king, and to function properly the economic system must be autonomous relative to the political system. But MMT recognizes that political and economic factors are closely coupled in modern societies and that many supposedly economic issues are really just as much political or ideological ones. That’s one of the reasons why I like the MMT approach so much. Another, is that it tells us that there are no mere accounting or solvency limitations on the actions we ought to be taking to re-make American society into something better. The limitations we face are real issues like full employment, inflation, and economic inequality, and, more generally, the consequences, including sustainability consequences, of our economic policies

Finally, a word, on another issue raised by ironymeter:

there’s nothing in MMT that requires Federal income taxes

Whew! I finally got an answer to the question I asked in #29. So, may I assume that MMT supporters are in favor of abolishing existing Federal taxes, save in times of full production capacity, and (possibly replacing) them with a straightforward wealth redistribution tax?

Sorry. Different, people using an MMT-based approach may well have different tax policies. Some will favor more re-distributive taxation, others not. Some will be partial to income taxes, others to progressive real estate taxation. MMT is an approach, and a paradigm, that allows for alternative theories and policies based on political and ideological differences. It does however exclude certain alternatives, such as the complete elimination of Federal taxes

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/52329

Something people generally do not think about is that they can save money with bartering. By exchanging services with a friend or relative rather than paying a stranger or a business, both you and the person you are bartering with get something you need without spending as much, if any, money.

What do you do for a living? What are your hobbies and other areas of expertise? For instance, if you are a web designer but aren’t that great with graphics, you could easily offer web design services in exchange for graphic work on the same project. The graphic designer gets work and exposure. You get work and exposure. It saves you money and puts the project in the hands of someone you can trust.

Think about What You Need

What services or products do you need? This will greatly affect who you can potentially barter with and how you can accomplish the barter. If you need work done on your house, you could offer your web design services to help the person who works on your home to get more business.

Depending on what you have to offer and what you need, you may find it harder to barter, but you can advertise in various places online and in person to help you get it done.

http://www.favstocks.com/how-to-save-money-by-bartering/0316204/

Foreign barter trading aswell accepted as forex trading is an accomplished best of investment. It has been about for a actual continued time and about involves affairs and affairs of currencies through a broker. It is a affectionate of business area you can acquire huge accumulation if the amount of the bill that you bought goes up. It is actual agnate to banal trading area the adopted currencies behave like shares of the bill institutions of the countries. As banal prices moves up or down, adopted bill barter aswell move up and down with time-dependent instability. It’s a bazaar that is best declared as virtual. Its attendance can be acquainted alone through absolute blast curve and internet connections. Before the accession of the internet, beforehand this bazaar was abundant aloof for banks or massive clandestine firms that had abundant amounts to cascade into their investments. But with their internet connection, it has accustomed abounding boilerplate traders to access into this advantageous bazaar and accomplish money. In contempo times, this forex trading bazaar has fatigued abounding investors. Today forex trading has angry into a assisting business and advised as one of the best and arresting banknote breeze apparatus because of the afterward reasons: Liquidity- Looking at the present scenario, its aqueous investment attributes is one of the key affidavit for accepting it amazing popularity. It is one of the a lot of aqueous markets you can barter in. Here trading can be done in absolute time and investment decisions are rapidly afflicted depending aloft the bazaar movements. Getting acutely aqueous in attributes investors can aswell calmly abjure his investments at any time relatively. Leverage: This is yet accession key acumen for getting advised as a acclaimed banknote breeze machine. It offers huge advantage generally up to 100:1 which agency ample profits can be generated from baby allowance deposits. Apart from all this, it is a zero-sum game, which agency that there are losers and winners i.e. if one banker loses again there have to be added who will win. However, if you plan hard, attending at all the abstracts and do the adapted analysis, the affairs are added that you may acquisition yourself on the appropriate ancillary of the market. It accession to this, adopted bill barter trading is a 24 hour market. This agency there is a absolute alternation to the money fabricated and your stamina. Besides this, organized as an over-the-counter market, adopted barter traders from any bend of the apple can be brought into acquaintance anniversary day via the internet. Forex trading is not altered from added businesses in agreement of the risks involved. It is as simple to accomplish accumulation but it is even easier to accident your money. Thus one of the a lot of important adaptation strategies in adopted barter trading is to be active of the bazaar trends and ups and downs. The ability of the bazaar trends works best if accumulated with technology. Consequently you can aswell yield the account of assorted forex trading accoutrement like Day Trading Robot or the FAP turbo to aerate your profits. Though in adopted bill barter bazaar you can lay down altered approach and rules to acquire accumulation but you are in fact your own boss. The money you accomplish is abased alone on your efforts. This explains why the adopted barter trading amphitheatre is advised such a abundant banknote breeze machine.

http://stockoption.mixedhome.com/foreign-exchange-trading-a-renowned-cash-flow-machine/

Virtually anything that can be sold can also be bartered. And guess what? A complex infrastructure exists, in Sacramento and across the country, to promote this invisible economy.

When Herb Miller was growing up in Elk Grove in the 1960s, he had an uncle who roamed the world mining for hard rocks and precious metals: gemstones, gold, platinum. To save his cash income, he would barter for mining equipment. “It taught me at a young age,” says Miller, “you don’t have to pay cash for things.”

For more than 30 years, Miller, now an Auburn-based jeweler and watchmaker, has used barter as a core part of his business and income model. He began by trading jewelry for needed dental work, moved to larger-scale trades around advertising and other necessary business projects, and eventually expanded his barter networks to incorporate a large part of his personal expenditures, too. In an average year, he calculates, he now does $25,000 to $50,000 of barter business.

“Some people do it just to go out to dinner,” Miller explains. “But if you’re using it the right way, it does enhance your business and gives you a bigger customer base. Any time the economy is like this, more and more people will barter. Because they’re sitting on inventory; people aren’t buying.”

During these economic dog days, millions of Americans have begun bartering their goods, their services, their time. Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that more than 200,000 barter-related ads were being placed on Craigslist every day, a 100 percent jump since 2008.

In the same way Russians began to use barter to secure produce they could no longer afford in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise and Argentines flocked to hundreds of newly created barter clubs following that country’s fiscal collapse in 2001, so in recent years Americans have increasingly looked to barter.

In Sacramento and across the country, there are now barter clubs, online trading sites, barter zines. In short, a complex barter infrastructure now exists to facilitate trade amongst people and companies short on cash but still needing and wanting to access markets. That infrastructure existed prior to the economic implosion of recent years, but the great collapse has dramatically fueled its expansion.

While barter used to be seen as somehow countercultural, a rejection of the great impersonal forces of market capitalism, these days, in the same way pot has become mainstream, so has barter. It’s no longer a symbol of anything countercultural; instead, increasingly, it’s a part of the regular business landscape, a way for businesses large and small to find ways to dispose of excess inventory or to take advantage of excess time. The Internal Revenue Service considers barter revenues to be taxable—there is a special form, the 1099-B, which businesses must fill in to declare their barter income—and barter business purchases to be deductible. Barter bank accounts are now considered a part of a person’s estate, transferable on death to the estate’s heirs.

Sacramentans Clif and Amy Edwards are living proof.

Clif runs a graphic-design business, working on magazine covers, restaurant menus and local billboards; his wife does astrology readings for parents looking for help in understanding their children’s behavior. Both are members of a local barter club.

“There’s two reasons to barter,” explains Clif. “One is for the [material] gains, and the other is for an ideology.” Barterers, he says, tend to be looking for community, wanting their business transactions to build that community rather than simply add to bank balances. They tend to be looking for camaraderie in trade.

While many businesses have seen barter soar during the recession, for Clif, the downtimes haven’t resulted in more barter—after all, he says, graphic design is a front-line business, particularly sensitive to upticks and to downturns in the economy. During the good times, businesses advertise more, splurge on new logos and so on. During the down times, they hold off—and that’s true to a degree whether they’re paying cash or simply bartering for services. But, absent barter, it’s likely things would have been even worse for him.

Now, though, Clif is starting to get more optimistic: There are signs the economy’s coming back to life. “It feels like everything’s flowing again. The ice block has gone.” He’s getting more cash clients, and he’s also getting more requests to barter. “Suddenly, the barter picked up,” he says. “So I do think the barter is going by the same rules.” Businesses putting out feelers regarding increased spending might still be reluctant in the short term to part with carefully saved cash; but, as the economic deep freeze starts to thaw, Clif has found them slightly more willing to trade services and product for his expertise.

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=1433741

The success of your WordPress business website depends on a lot of things, how abundant cartage is advancing to your website, how your website is designed, if it’s simple to navigate, simple to acquaintance you, if it has abundant agreeable and affluence of added things. However, the a lot of important affair to starting a acknowledged WordPress business website is to begin the above apparatus of your website on cardboard afore you alpha putting it calm on the web.

There are four above apparatus you allegation to begin on cardboard to accomplish it easier on yourself after on; the home page, acquaintance page, about me area and your monetization strategy.

We’ll allocution about the home page first.

Next to your monetization strategy, the homepage is apparently one of the a lot of important pages on your website. The homepage is the aboriginal affair that your admirers will see if they go to your website.

Make abiding that the adapt will abate abashing and accomplish it simple for your barter to acquisition what they’re searching for. You wish to break abroad from accepting too abundant traveling on at the aforementioned time because alone a committed chump is traveling to try and abstract what’s traveling on.

For example, accepting a lot of activated ad links, diminutive text, continued paragraphs and awe-inspiring fonts will either abstract your barter or annul them. Accomplish your homepage as simple as accessible and adviser your barter to area you ultimately wish them to go on your website.

The accent of a acceptable acquaintance page

The acquaintance page is area abounding new entrepreneurs absence the baiter on the WordPress business websites. If you’re just starting your website and business online you wish to accomplish abiding that you allure the acquaintance as abundant as possible.

What does that mean?

Make abiding that you acquire affluence of agency for your barter to get in acquaintance with you, even if that agency downloading new pieces of software.

Make abiding you acquire a annual like Skype which will acquiesce barter to alarm you from their computer chargeless if they acquire Skype as well. You can aswell burning bulletin with Skype, which allows added barter to ability you instantly. Skype aswell has a annual that will acquiesce you to accomplish calls from your computer to someone’s buzz and for you to acquire a buzz bulk through Skype.

An email abode is an accessible best to acquire on your acquaintance page but to accomplish your email complete added able put abutment at the beginning.

For example, if you buy a area name from GoDaddy alleged MyBusiness.com add an email annual with them, which is chargeless to do, and alarm it Abutment @ MyBusiness.com. That gives your email abode a able feel that will win credibility with your customers.

The ‘about me’ section

It doesn’t complete like this area is all that important but this is area your barter will get to apperceive you. Yield some time and put some anticipation into autograph this area or cutting it on video.

An important assignment to apprentice about starting a business website is that humans do business with humans they like. There are abounding scams on the internet and if you appearance just a little personality to your barter they’ll be fatigued to you and your products.

Another tips is to hotlink the about me area to your acquaintance page, which will just accomplish action added seamless for your customers.

The endure section of the addle is the monetization strategy

It’s amazing how abounding agency you can monetize a business website and some are beneath accessible than others.

If you acquire a artefact or annual you can acutely monetize your business website
by announcement those. If you wish to advertise added people’s being on your website you can aswell do that, it’s about alleged Affiliate Marketing.

If you do consulting of any affectionate you can run the absolute WorPpress business website yourself and use a affairs like Genbook to allegation your barter for their consultations.

One of the best agency in my assessment to monetize a website is through a associates website or a anchored associates website. A associates website is what it sounds like humans pay a assertive bulk anniversary ages to acquire and acquire admission to the agreeable you outline for them. A anchored associates website is accessible for a anchored bulk of time for anniversary member.

For archetype if you wish to do a six ages training on how to alternation your dog, you can set your website up to acquire payments for 6 months and that affiliate is finished, they don’t acquire to tie themselves down to a constant abiding arrangement with your website.

All of these apparatus are traveling to yield some time and possibly a lot of abatement on cardboard but if you acquire your adapt in duke afore you alpha piecing calm your website, I agreement it’s traveling to be a lot easier to do and in the continued run a lot faster to get up and running.

http://bit.ly/d3fH6o

PR Log (Press Release) – Jun 02, 2010 – NEW YORK, June 3, 2010 – BarterQuest (www.barterquest.com), a platform that supports the cashless exchange of goods, services and real estate, today announced that people can now follow BarterQuest on Twitter and become our fan on Facebook.

On Twitter, BarterQuest’s tag is #barterquest. You can be among the first to learn about items of special interest that have been newly listed on our site and are available to trade. You can join the growing community of BarterQuest followers and tweet your thoughts about the site or barter generally. And you can become a fan of BarterQuest on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/BarterQuest/44313703688. Share your trading experiences. Be up to date on what may be happening on the site, post your comments on our wall, and participate in an exchange of ideas.

“Barter is an inherently social activity,” stated Dr. Paul Bocheck, President BarterQuest. “To successfully trade you need to network, communicate, and have trust in your trading partner. BarterQuest is all about making trading easier by providing effective ways for you to find your trading partner, negotiate and complete your trade, and have greater confidence that you will get what you bargained for. Social media provides a natural extension of and compliment to the trading community formed on our site.  We hope that people will use Twitter to follow us and learn more about current trading opportunities. We also hope that people will become our fans on Facebook and share their thoughts; this can make others more successful traders and help BarterQuest to better support them.”

About BarterQuest

BarterQuest supports the cashless exchange of all types of goods, services, and real estate. BarterQuest provides a trading platform based on proprietary technology (patents filed) that instantly matches the haves and wants of users for two party and multi-party trades. Barter is facilitated by a user friendly Web design that is unique in its combination of features that support trading.  BarterQuest is headquartered in New York, NY and is owned and operated by JPM Global, Inc., a Delaware corporation. For more information, visit www.BarterQuest.com.

Except for historical information contained herein, this news release may contain forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties.

http://bit.ly/aiL6U2

One day my wife told me that her friend offered her to teach swimming. This was in return for taking care of her aquarium while she was away on vacation.  My wife said ‘what an offer’, to which I said ‘what a Barter’.

The barter system for getting goods and services dates back many centuries. In most cultures the barter system was used before money was created. What makes the barter system even better today than ever before is that it can now be done globally.

There are examples of property bartering system popular in Dubai to swap their lands as per their convenience and deal. Interesting?

Musician Joel P.West launched his record Dust Jacket and the record is available only through the barter system. It mentions that To receive the free download, send in something of your own creation that describes a part of you. It could be a candid thought or a journal entry, a drawing you’ve been working on for months or a photograph you accidentally took thirty seconds ago. It could be a song or video, an image of something you are building, or it could even be a single word.

I think Bartering is widespread now. In 2008, China signed a barter deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo worth $9bn to build the country’s infrastructure in return for a slice of its mineral wealth. Both parties held the deal up as a win-win. China needs raw materials for its industries and DR Congo does not have the money to pay to upgrade its infrastructure. (BBC, 14 April 2008)

Bartering can also be used by businesses that are seasonal in nature such as resort hotels. A bartered hotel room is more cost effective than an empty one. Bartering thus allows businesses to capitalize on unproductive assets and spare or unused capacity. With a large exchange, it is possible to barter pretty much anything.

Bartering is a win-win situation for the individuals and businesses.  Following are the benefits of bartering for individuals and businesses:

Benefits of bartering for individuals

• Save money
• Recycling
• Build relationships
• Spring cleaning

Benefits of bartering for Businesses

• Conserve cash.
• Generate new business.
• Turn excess and idle inventory into useful products and services.

There are several bartering websites which allow online transactions:

U-Exchange

Trashbank

CareToTrade

The Internet Barter Exchange

PeopleTradingServices.com

Freecycle

Let’s take a plunge to see how these websites work. Few websites allow Items to be exchanged for items or skills, however some of the websites allow transacting with cash as well.  Below table explains the mode along with some examples:

What Can be Swapped?

Example:

This is growing up at good pace. Infact the barter industry have 450,000 businesses worldwide turning over US$9 billion per annum (barternews.com, 9 July 2009). This has grown up over the past years of recession when there was cash crunch however Companies should focus on utilizing this new mode of commerce and drive innovative ways to do online business and reduce cost.

Can you suggest some innovative ways of bartering which can help various companies in different sectors? I term it as Barter e-Commerce or B-Commerce. What do you think?

http://www.infosysblogs.com/multi-channel-retailing/2010/06/next_generation_bartering.html

One of the most overlooked methods of doing business is using the barter system. People assume that you have to pay money in exchange for the receipt of something of value. Not only is this not true, it makes good business sense to barter for the exchange of goods and services. Bartering is a great way to get and give something of value without spending a dime.

Just exactly does it mean to barter anyway?

Barter or trade is a powerful tool that represents a solution for companies with available inventory or services. By accepting payment in trade dollars instead of cash, a business maximizes their efficiency by increasing inventory turnover or billable hours. Using the trade dollars earned, the company can purchase the goods or services they want – without paying cash.

Bartering can occur with almost anything. Any product or service can be bartered and it doesn’t have to be a business only trade. In planning to barter, it’s important to think creatively. What have you got to offer that someone is willing to trade for? What do you need in exchange? When planning to barter it’s also important to understand that it never hurts to ask. Inquire and ask a supplier if they barter. Don’t be embarrassed. You don’t barter because you don’t have the money to spend. You should do it because it’s one of the smartest and fastest growing ways of doing business.

You can barter at any time. It’s an excellent way to build relationships while conserving cash. Excess goods and services can be traded for things and goods that you need.

Here are some examples:

You are an expert in marketing. You need a new brochure; you can barter your marketing expertise to a printing company in exchange for them printing the product.

You are an expert in customer service. You need a vacation; you can trade your expertise at the Hotel destination in exchange for free rooms.

You have a yard sale and a painter comes by who wants some of your stuff. You need your house painted. You can offer to trade the stuff you are planning to sell for their painting services.

Here are some methods for more successful bartering:

Be flexible in your thinking.

Bartering will not always deliver exactly what you want, when you want. You must be willing to change vendors, try new ways to promote your business, or perhaps look into different options. If you can be flexible bartering will not only work for you but it will make life more interesting and adventurous.

Be creative.

Creativity means you must be willing to look beyond the obvious. You must see new ways of doing things. Don’t only think cash as the answer. You might find that trading can be an even more powerful motivational tool. Using trade to settle debt, close sales, travel, or charitable contributions are just a few of the creative applications of bartering.

Be willing to wait for the right opportunity.

As with patience, with bartering, good things come to those who wait. Nine times out of 10 you will get you what you want, but you may have to wait for it.

Be quick to respond.

While you must be willing to wait, you must also move quickly when something comes along that is not normally available on trade. Those who do not respond quickly are often left sitting on the sidelines. It’s like a taking advantage of a great sale. Don’t spend time mulling it over; grab it the first time.

Think barter first.

In the normal, everyday world you are always thinking about how you are going to increase sales to pull in more dollars into your business. In the barter world, the sell-side is easy. Now you need to expend the same kind of time and energy on using your dollars. You must think trade before spending cash. Think trade all the time.

http://businessplanoutline.thecompanymarketing.com/2010/06/01/bartering-for-more-business/

We know Harry will never understand the brilliance of  “Bartering” and we know, with his millionaire status (somehow on a politicians salary, which needs further explanation but we shant hold our breath since old Harry loves to spend OPM but would NEVER explain how he amassed a small  fortune while never working an honest day in his life ). We also know old Harry would never actually shop where the rest of us normal folk who work  in private industry, shop, at CostCo that is!  And we know Harry will ALWAYS stoop so low as to belittle a potential opponent on subjects Harry knows absolutely nothing about (Economics, Wasteful Spending, Bartering).    But this isn’t about Harry Reid.

The above pictured article was printed in the most recent issue of CostCo’s FREE  magazine, “The CostCo Connection”. A must read. Especially right now as the liberals and other left wing loon’s (John Smith comes to mind here, with his Column in Sundays  Review Journal, something  about Sue Lowden and a flock of Chickens roosting on John’s Hairless Head) are all blasting Sue Lowden on her actually brilliant statement on health care and the barter system.  Thank you CostCo  for this timely article about a system MILLIONS of Americans are using TODAY, especially in this time of economic uncertainty, recession, out of control political spending, and political pandering by left wing liberals.  If you haven’t got a copy, get your butt off the couch,  drive  to CostCo and pick up the CostCo Connection! Pages 20 and 21, Barter 2.0  !!!  “An ancient idea gets a modern twist”!         (It’s probably also on the CostCo web site).

Thank You Sue Lowden, for bringing the  “System of Barter”, a system that actually works, for the benefit of all parties involved, to our attention and Thank You CostCo for your great follow-up article on the Barter System.

Imagine (if you will) that you’re a painter with a need for minor surgery, you offer to paint your doctors house in return for the surgery needed,  a win for both parties (except maybe not  for old Harry and his “Tax and Spend” Cronies). How about if you’re a Plumber, you offer your doctor a new and updated (water saver) toilet for some medical procedure you or your family may need. A win/win/win, (for you, the Doctor and the green folk who want water conservation). The list can go on and on and on, bartering is a huge part of the American spirit. (OK, I concede, bartering for open heart surgery may not work, the doctor may have you open and ready for that triple by-pass and decide he wants to re-negotiate with you, a time you just might not be at your negotiating best).  There are many Bartering Exchanges in our country (google bartering exchange) and they are growing at unprecedented rates due to the economy, unemployment and the administrations inability or lack of desire to actually fix the problems facing us today.

Don’t be a “Brain Dead Liberal” by knocking something you don’t understand and have never tried, (like the liberals who applauded the Mexican President and his BLASTING of  Arizona’s new illegal immigrant laws without ever reading them and without realizing these same laws mimic the federal laws most of them voted for and supported in the past, probably without ever reading these very same federal laws).

Brains, Brilliance, Beauty and Bartering to Boot. What else would a voter want in a future Senator?  VOTE, Vote Soon and Vote For SUE LOWDEN  for U.S. Senator !

And remember, if you continue to be a bit brain dead and vote for Harry Reid, you have just “Bartered” your vote for a “Future Harry Handout”. A  handout we (Taxpayers) are all forced to pay for sometime in the future.

http://blogs.reviewjournal.com/uncategorized/the-brilliance-of-the-barter